raised along the back of her arms and she told herself she was being paranoid. No one was following her. No one knew what she was up to. No one could. She hadn’t told a soul.
And yet, she was almost certain she was being followed. She glanced to her purse. Pulled her cell phone out of the zipper pocket. If she was going to call someone, it had to be now, before her service cut out as it did in several spots along this stretch of road.
Call who? Say what? That you suspect someone is following you? Why? Because you’re digging into the Jezebel Brentwood mystery?
She snorted in disgust and tossed her cell into her purse.
The headache was getting to her. The impending divorce was getting to her. All the talk about Jessie was getting to her. And that strange prediction from the old lady at Deception Bay—that was really getting to her. The thought that someone was out to do her harm was her constant and worrisome companion.
“It’s bunk,” she told herself as the CD played and the wipers slapped away the rain. “Bullshit. Nothing more.”
But she knew better.
Her teeth sank into her lip and she swallowed hard.
Payback?
Justice?
For what?
What have I done?
“Mother Mary, help me.” Renee sketched the sign of the cross over her chest, a movement she hadn’t practiced since her senior year at St. Elizabeth’s, but the comfort she once had found in murmuring a quick prayer now eluded her, reminding her only of the bones that had been found at the base of the statue of the Madonna.
She glanced in her mirror again and the trailing vehicle’s headlights seemed brighter than before, more intense.
“It’s no one,” she muttered under her breath as another obscure Springsteen song drifted through the speakers. Renee barely noticed. Her gaze was split between the rain-spattered windshield and the rearview mirror that burned bright headlights back into her eyes. “Bastard,” she muttered.
She’d lose whoever it was in the mountains. Didn’t want anyone knowing where she was going, that she had screwed up her courage and planned to visit the old hag of a fortune teller again. That she intended to learn more about her fate and what the woman knew, if anything, about Jessie.
For the love of God, she was starting to think like Tamara, and that was scary. Damned scary.
She glanced at the headlights in the mirror again and set her jaw. She wasn’t going to spend the next two hours worrying about him. Or her. If they were following her, they were in for a race.
Renee stepped on it.
Her Camry shot forward to the foothills of the Coast Range, where anyone, even a reporter for a half-rate newspaper, could disappear in the twisting canyons, inky tunnels, and rising mist.
Chapter Eight
Motive, Mac thought with dark satisfaction. Motive.
It was late. There was no one in this part of the building but the janitor, who was down the hall singing a medley of Elvis hits off-key and with replacement words when he forgot the lyrics, which was every third line. Mac listened to a butchered version of “Can’t Help Falling in Love” while he sifted through the evidence found buried near the Madonna statue.
He knew it all by memory, practically by Braille, he’d passed the pieces between his fingers so often, but he kept feeling he’d learn something new if he just kept at it.
…Wise men say, only fools rush in…but I keep keeping myself away from you…
“But I can’t help falling in love with you,” Mac muttered, his satisfaction still in place. Jessie Brentwood had been pregnant. Okay, correction: the remains in the grave revealed the victim had been pregnant, and Mac fervently believed those remains belonged to Jessie Brentwood. If all that was true, then Mac finally had a motive for Jessie’s disappearance and murder: one of the Preppy Pricks didn’t want to be a daddy.
That’s what had been hard to come up with at the time of the girl’s disappearance. Motive. Mac had sensed so much more than what those young bastards were telling him, but he had no proof…and no motive. An argument with her teen boyfriend—the Walker kid—hadn’t been enough. Now, thinking back, he wondered why he’d been so sure, why he’d always been, when the evidence had been so slim.
He’d just known something had happened. Known it in the marrow of his bones. Felt it. Lived it. But couldn’t prove it.
Maybe now…maybe…now…
And the case was his.
Finally.
The small pile in front of him contained bits of leaves, several cigarette butts, disintegrating candy wrappers, an indistinguishable piece of white plastic, and a small jackknife. The knife appeared to be the murder weapon, as there was a nick along one of the vic’s ribs, indicating she was stabbed at least once. They were not able to lift prints from the knife; it had been in the ground too long. The lab was working on DNA from the bone marrow, but unless they got a match from someone in their database, there was no way of identifying the remains by that method. If these bones were adoptee Jezebel Brentwood’s, that would mean they were looking for her biological parents, who could be anywhere, or a sibling or other relative, and that they would also have to be in the system. Mac had made contact with the Brentwoods, who had assured him they knew nothing about Jessie’s biological parents. They’d been less than thrilled to talk to him after his bullish investigative tactics years earlier, and so for now, he was leaving them alone.
But the baby’s bones—if they weren’t too degraded—now, that was another matter. If DNA could be extracted, or even a blood type discovered and one of those damned Preppy Pricks turned out to be the father…He smiled to himself. What was it they said? Something about revenge being best when served up cold. Hell, this case was twenty years cold. Damned well freezing. And yes, revenge was already tasting sweet.
Twenty fucking years of taking crap.
And now, he was about to be vindicated.
Eat that, Sandler, he thought, still hearing his latest partner’s taunts. He couldn’t wait to prove to her that he’d been right all along.
But there was something else that bothered him.
Mac picked up the note from the technician that stated there was an anomaly with the bone structure of both the adult and infant’s skeletons. A bone burr. “Anomaly,” he muttered for about the hundredth time. He’d called the tech, who’d been rushed and hard to pin down.
“Her bottom rib is extra, more like a partial rib, and it’s fused to the one above it. I’ve never seen anything quite like it,” the tech with a slight Mideastern accent had told him.
“Well, that might help us identify her if there’s an X-ray somewhere…?” Mac said somewhat hurriedly, sensing the tech was about to hang up. “Is it from an injury?”
“The baby’s, too?” The tech practically sneered. “More like the bottom rib is an extra. A spare.”
“So
